Featured Domains

Apple “wins”, but plays whac-a-mole with counterfeiters

Company wins domain name dispute, but it won’t do the company much good.

Apple has won a domain name dispute against what it alleges to be an outfit selling counterfeit Apple products. But it might have to continue chasing the perpetrators.

In May the company won a domain name dispute for apple-downloads.com and apple-oem.com. The company alleged at the time that both domain names were used to sell what were likely pirated our counterfeit copies of its software.

Fast forward to last week, and the company just won another case against what it thinks is the same perpetrator.

This time the company gets control of applebigdiscount.com, applesdiscount.com, applessales.com and applestorewell.com. The domains are registered to a variety of people, but Apple thinks they’re all the same — and the same group behind the domains it won earlier this year.

The problem for Apple is that some of these domain names were registered immediately after the decision in the first case was handed down. This means that the group behind the registrations is likely to just move on to other domains, and Apple will be forced to file more domain disputes.

It’s a classic game of whac-a-mole, unless Apple figures out the true identity of the registrants and is able to track them down in the courts.